Yvette Audain

01/01/2012: STOP PRESS - I am moving to Melbourne, Australia, on 18th January 2012! News of the day - the big reveal!

Right, on with the bio...
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Born and resident in Auckland, New Zealand, Yvette is a busy and prolific musical personality. In the classical genre, she has played clarinet for New Zealand Opera, Bach Musica and Waitakere City Orchestra, and is also an associate saxophonist with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra (APO).
She has a strong background in concert bands, having worked for the Royal New Zealand Navy Band and the Band of the Wellington and Hawkes Bay Regiment.

Yvette's musical versatility extends to recorder and Irish whistle as well as clarinet and saxophone. She can be heard in situations ranging from authentic 1920s dance orchestra Brett's New Internationals (early jazz), to original folk instrumental trio Doris, to completely-improvised sets accompanied by a DJ, and many more situations in between.

Yvette enjoys a productive, ever-rewarding career as a composer - a recent achievement in this area includes having her work 'Eulogy' (text by Olivia Macassey) read and recorded by the Auckland Philharmonia (dir. Kenneth Young; narrator Stuart Devenie) in their 2010 Graduate Composer Workshop. The work was programmed in the APO concert 'Works With Words' in association with the 2011 Readers and Writers' Festival.
Recent commissions include 'Three Auckland Nocturnes' which was premiered by the Auckland Mandolinata Orchestra at the 2008 FAME International Festival in Sydney, and 'Walking Bach' which was premiered by the same ensemble in Auckland, January 2011. From 2008 she has been a member of the APO's talented team of arrangers, and has had another commission 'Felix the Cat: The Magic Bag' (score for short cartoon film) performed by the APO Wind Quintet.
March 2011 brought the impressively well-attended 'Grooves Unspoken: Music by Yvette Audain', a programme consisting entirely of Yvette's own music, at St Lukes Church, Remuera, Auckland. This was in proud association with the 2011 Auckland Fringe Festival.
Compositional plans for the immediate future include further additions to her woodwind repertoire, as well as expanding her portfolio of orchestral music.
She is always contactable and available for further commissions - see contact me.

Yvette has considerable experience as a tutor of all her instruments, in both Auckland and Wellington. She continues her passionate involvement in education with a galvanising itinerant tutoring schedule (composition, clarinet, saxophone) in several Auckland schools, as well as teaching privately in her Central Auckland home. In September 2010 she was presented with the inaugural Teachers' Award from the exceptionally high-achieving St Peter's College Music Department. Yvette believes in finding as many valuable performance experiences as possible for her students, and supporting them in this. She also relishes the opportunity to compose music for them to learn and perform.

Yvette holds a Bachelor of Music in composition and clarinet from the University of Auckland, and a Bachelor of Music (First Class Honours) in composition and ethnomusicology from Victoria University of Wellington, where she subsequently completed her Master of Music (with Merit) in composition. After being awarded these qualifications, Yvette went on to complete a Graduate Diploma in Teaching (Secondary) from the University of Auckland.

Among the composition scholarships and awards Yvette has received are the Bishop Junior and Senior Scholarships, the Llewellyn Jones Prize in Music for Piano, a graduate scholarship from the New Zealand Federation of University Women, 2nd place in the 1998 Sky City Auckland Wind Orchestra Composers' Competition, and several placings in the Auckland University Composition Prize Concerts. Yvette's work has so far been performed throughout New Zealand as well as in Australia, Japan and the USA.

(Yvette Audain, July 2011)